Law School Offers Free Tuition In Exchange For Public Service Job

November 10, 1994|By New York Times News Service.

NEW YORK — To help increase the dwindling number of lawyers in public service, New York University School of Law said Tuesday it will give free tuition to students who agree to take low-paying legal jobs after graduation.

Students would have to serve in these jobs for 10 years, and the university will ensure this by repaying all law school costs-as much as $40,000 a year at NYU-for as long as the graduate remains in public service. If, for example, a graduate spends six years working in a public defender's office, 60 percent of the debt would be paid by the university.

Officials said the plan, to begin next fall, would be the most ambitious in the country. Although other law schools offer reduced tuition and debt forgiveness for students specializing in public service or graduates working in public service, "the NYU program is for a substantially higher amount of money," said a spokeswoman for the American Bar Association.

The high cost of law school at many leading colleges and universities has been a mounting concern to institutions like the ABA, which has adopted measures urging law schools to improve the number of their graduates entering public-interest law.

The low salaries for public service jobs-typically $20,000 to $30,000 a year-have pushed many students to higher-paying jobs at law firms or other large corporations just to pay student loan debt. Yearly salaries at such firms can average $80,000 or more.

The program will cover the entering classes of 1995, 1996 and 1997. With 420 students enrolling a year, university officials say the $10 million will cover up to half of the class, far more than the expected demand.

The NYU plan is the latest in a series of financial measures intended to encourage students getting expensive professional degrees, not only in law but in medicine and education, to assist the poor and the infirm or to work in rural areas.

Whether these programs succeed in the long term in increasing the number of public-service lawyers, doctors or teachers remains a point of debate.

But it is clear that they help in the short term. A study for the Journal of the American Medical Association said doctors working in rural areas as members of the National Health Service Corps, which carries repayment of federal loans for medical school, stay in their practices long enough to complete their obligation but leave soon afterward.